D&D (2024) Does WotC view the Monk class as overtuned from their perspective?

[doctorbadwolf]

And yet they did nothing in this playtest to reduce the monk's dependence on short rests, despite doing precisely that for the Warlock. If this playtest goes live monks will essentially be the only class that is significantly balanced around short rests and it is something that will be noticed in actual play by any group that has a monk.



I cannot agree more with this line of thinking, other than perhaps to reiterate that Stunning strike is perhaps the most annoying part of the current monk. Not only is it absurdly better than every other monk class feature, it also outright incentivises monk players to just spam all their ki on stunning strike because the stun condition is effectively a fight ender the moment it lands. And that is before we even consider that Stunning strike being the almost universally best use of ki completely interferes with subclass abilities as well because they are competing for the same resource. It's bad game design, pure and simple.

What I want to see is to tweak the monk to be less reliant on stunning strike and redistribute some of that class balance elsewhere. Where we all might disagree would be where those changes needed be. Personally I'm of a mid that the monk needsa d10 hit die and the martial arts die should be starting at d6 and go up to d12. I also think the monk needs alternative strike options to stunning strike and that masteries represent a possibility of how to implement that sort of thing, but your milage may vary.

My duelist monk rewrite I’m messing around with regain 1 ki when you get a natural 20 on an attack, saving throw, or an ability check made as part of using a duelist class feature.

I’ve also made it so the duelist can parry (deflect attacks, 2 times a round at 5th, 3 times at 11th) multiple times a round as you level up (contrasted with the Assassin doing so once a round but doing a much bigger riposte when they do).

Stunning Strike has to compete with a big whomp of a hit, and with using a successful hit to become very hard to hit.

 

[Neonchameleon]

And yet they did nothing in this playtest to reduce the monk's dependence on short rests, despite doing precisely that for the Warlock. If this playtest goes live monks will essentially be the only class that is significantly balanced around short rests and it is something that will be noticed in actual play by any group that has a monk.

They did give the monk the Meditation rule for one minute short rests. And unlike the warlock the monk isn't broken if they get a short rest with every encounter and multiple encounters per day. But honestly this is good news to me as it indicates that WotC have given up on turning warlocks into generic half-casters.

What I want to see is to tweak the monk to be less reliant on stunning strike and redistribute some of that class balance elsewhere.

Hear, hear. And I agree where it goes is going to be disagreed with.

 

[Clint_L]

I dont think they value this at all personally.

I dont think this matters to them much, i feel if anything they value the movement speed more, since technically speaking you can use it to just kite enemies endlessly.

A lot of folks give this argument about movement speed and kiting, but I don’t buy it. It works in a CRPG because they have stupid AIs, but what DM is just going to have a creature or NPC mindlessly plod after the monk while being sloooowly whittled down by darts? Maybe a zombie, but anything else is going to change tactics, fast.

 

[FallenRX]

A lot of folks give this argument about movement speed and kiting, but I don’t buy it. It works in a CRPG because they have stupid AIs, but what DM is just going to have a creature or NPC mindlessly plod after the monk while being sloooowly whittled down by darts? Maybe a zombie, but anything else is going to change tactics, fast.

I think the issue is more they have the movement speed to just attack creatures and just walk away massively reducing damage while the the creatures which a lot of them are melee cant really do anything about.
If they disengage their is no downside, if they just walk away and take 1 opportunity attack this is incredibly good at higher levels because most creatures have Multiattack, so youve massive reduced damage, opened up movement from everyone else around them.(if they have mobile they dont even need to spend ki to do this.)

On top of this even if they have a ranged attack, you have deflect missiles, so that is also reduced as well.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I think some people take it too personal that WotC did not buff the monk. Also I think people still don't understand what the playtsst is about: testing. Not presenting final solutions.

Just to reiterate: the playtest states that weapon mastwry is not refined yet. Warlock feedback is still collected. If the change to long rest gets lukewarm responses (which they probably sadly will), why bother switching to long rest for the monk?
So even though I can feel with people who hoped for a buff to their favourite class, I think patience is required. And looking behind pure numbers, as it is impossible to gauge where the target number lies.

That does not mean, that we should not complain about stunning stike beeing suck or totally safe, boring gameplay due to lack of ki at low level. Weapon mastery and unarmed strikes working against each other instead of working together...

 

[Gammadoodler]

I think the issue is more they have the movement speed to just attack creatures and just walk away massively reducing damage while the the creatures which a lot of them are melee cant really do anything about.
If they disengage their is no downside, if they just walk away and take 1 opportunity attack this is incredibly good at higher levels because most creatures have Multiattack, so youve massive reduced damage, opened up movement from everyone else around them.(if they have mobile they dont even need to spend ki to do this.)

On top of this even if they have a ranged attack, you have deflect missiles, so that is also reduced as well.

My general experience with the monk is that kiting in 5e is not as achievable in most scenarios as people would think.

A monk can kite better than most, but they really need to pick up something like the mobile feat and be in terrain where there is a place to go where they aren't also under threat and have enough movement to spare after moving to the enemy to get more than the enemies speed distance away, or be willing to use a ranged weapon themselves (and ignore most of their class features).

Outside of these circumstances, it was pretty rare for my monk to be able to place themselves out of reach of enemy melee unless they were bailing on the encounter.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

My general experience with the monk is that kiting in 5e is not as achievable in most scenarios as people would think.

A monk can kite better than most, but they really need to pick up something like the mobile feat and be in terrain where there is a place to go where they aren't also under threat and have enough movement to spare after moving to the enemy to get more than the enemies speed distance away, or be willing to use a ranged weapon themselves (and ignore most of their class features).

Outside of these circumstances, it was pretty rare for my monk to be able to place themselves out of reach of enemy melee unless they were bailing on the encounter.

Man the monk should have the ability to hit someone, and make it so that if they move they take more damage.

TBH the Monk's main upgrade to Unarmed Strike should be to do extra stuff with it.

 

[Charlaquin]

Man the monk should have the ability to hit someone, and make it so that if they move they take more damage.

That would be neat, like a mini-quivering palm.

 

[tetrasodium]

I think the issue is more they have the movement speed to just attack creatures and just walk away massively reducing damage while the the creatures which a lot of them are melee cant really do anything about.
If they disengage their is no downside, if they just walk away and take 1 opportunity attack this is incredibly good at higher levels because most creatures have Multiattack, so youve massive reduced damage, opened up movement from everyone else around them.(if they have mobile they dont even need to spend ki to do this.)

On top of this even if they have a ranged attack, you have deflect missiles, so that is also reduced as well.

One step beyond this is If the monk's target is threatened* by one or more other PCs it can't give chase without suffering multiple OAs. At that point the gm is screwed either way because the monk player expects monsters to go after them citing "I'm a Frontline tank [and should be attacked as such you adversarial metagaming GM]" while the everyone at the table knows doing so is stupid and suicidal under those conditions

* 5e might lack the terms on a technical level, but past editions did not.

 

[FallenRX]

I think that would be great. Changing the long rest duration is what made our games great and way more balanced.

I mean thats kinda what the rest variant rules are for, those are literally just examples of the types of rules one can create, i remember it even saying this.